The scanner
The scanner reads what is on your screen: QR codes, barcodes, and ordinary text. It is the leftmost button in the kind group, and its tooltip reads "Scan for codes and text".
Everything it does runs on your own machine. Nothing is sent anywhere to be read.
Scanning
Choosing Scanner puts you in region mode and hides the other mode buttons, because a scan is always a scan of a region. Draw a rectangle over whatever you want read.
Where the mode buttons were, there is now a single Scan again button. Press it to read the region again. While a scan is running its icon spins and the button reads "Scanning".
Each scan takes a fresh picture of the region at that moment. It does not use a frozen screen, so if the thing you are scanning has changed since you drew the rectangle, scan again and it will read the new state.
What you see
Codes get an outline that follows the code's own orientation, so a tilted or angled code gets a tilted outline rather than a rectangle around it. Hovering one pops up a bubble telling you what it says and what clicking it will do.
Words are washed very faintly all the time, so you can see at a glance what is selectable. The wash strengthens when you hover a word, and strengthens again when it is selected.
Clicking a code
Left-clicking a code does the sensible thing for that kind of code, and then the app closes. The hover bubble always tells you which of these you are about to get:
| What the code holds | What clicking it does |
|---|---|
| A web address | Opens it in your browser |
| A location | Opens it as a map |
| A phone number | Starts a call |
| An email address | Opens a new message, with the subject and body filled in if the code carried them |
| A text message | Opens a new message to that number |
| Wi-Fi details | Joins the network. See below |
| A contact card | Saves it and opens it, so your address book can take it |
| A calendar event | Saves it and opens it, so your calendar can take it |
| Anything else | Copies it to your clipboard |
If a code holds plain text that begins with something that looks like a web address, the app will still offer to open it.
Right-clicking a code is the alternative. It opens a small menu with a single item, "Copy QR Contents" for a QR code and "Copy contents" for anything else. That copies the code's full raw contents, and unlike a left-click, it leaves the app open so you can carry on scanning. Click anywhere else to dismiss the menu.
Joining a Wi-Fi network
Wi-Fi QR codes are the ones printed on a router, or handed out by a café. The hover bubble reads "Join Wi-Fi" followed by the network name. Click it and the app asks your system to join, using your operating system's own networking tool. You do not have to type the password.
If your system does not have that tool available, the app does the next best thing: it copies the password to your clipboard, so you can open your normal Wi-Fi menu and paste it. If the network has no password, it copies the network name instead.
Selecting text
Text recognition needs one extra piece of software, tesseract, plus at least
one language pack. macOS and Windows official builds and Linux installs differ
here, and if it is missing, the text recognition switch in Settings is greyed
out with a note explaining why. The rest of the scanner still works.
Selecting recognised words works the way text selection works everywhere else:
| Gesture | What it does |
|---|---|
| Click and drag | Selects from where you started to where you are, picking up whole rows as you drag up or down |
| Double-click | Selects that line |
| Triple-click | Selects everything |
| Ctrl+click | Adds or removes a single word |
| Shift+click | Extends the selection to there |
| Ctrl+Shift+click and drag | Adds that range to what is already selected |
Right-clicking opens a menu with Copy, Select all and Select none. Right-clicking a word that is not currently selected selects just that word first.
| Keys | What it does |
|---|---|
| primary + A | Select all text |
| primary + C | Copy the selected text |
| primary + D | Clear the selection |
The primary key is Ctrl on Linux and Windows, and Cmd on macOS.
Copying text does not close the app. That is deliberate, and it is the opposite of clicking a code. You can copy one paragraph, then another, then scan somewhere else, all in one session. Close it with Esc when you are done.
Turning each half on or off
Both halves of the scanner have their own switch in Settings, under Capture Modes, and both are on by default:
- Enable QR/barcode recognition: recognised codes become clickable.
- Enable text recognition (OCR): recognised words become selectable. There is a Text matching strictness slider alongside it.